Walmart Bananas Now Come With Pinching Scorpions

When you examine the bananas in the produce aisle of your local Walmart, one is usually looking at the ripeness of the fruit. But one man found out the hard way, you should probably look for scorpions (and deadly Brazilian spiders), too.

The Pennsylvania man was shopping with his two- and three-year-old children at a local Walmart when he grabbed a bunch of bananas from a display box and felt a pinching sensation, CBS Pittsburgh reports.

“I yanked my arm out and flung it, and this scorpion flopped to the ground,” he said. “I was standing there in disbelief looking and there was another shopper there and people started to converge, and sure enough it was a scorpion.”

After standing in a state of disbelief for a moment (who wouldn’t?), the man jumped into action – covering the scorpion with a lid and killing it.

The man wasn’t seriously hurt, just a bit shaken-up (and rightfully so). However, he did visit a doctor as a precaution.

So, just how could a scorpion show up in a box of bananas in the middle of Pennsylvania? We don’t know for sure, but it may have hitched a ride all the way from the grower.

The man says a Walmart representative told him that even the fruit company was surprised the scorpion was able to survive the long journey in the box. Walmart did not return a request for comment to CBS Pittsburgh.

In all, the man says the experience has taught him to think twice before reaching into a box of bananas.

I used to work for a large supermarket years ago and finding live critters in the fruit and veg was common. The spiders in the bananas were the worst but the coolest thing we found was a tree frog in a box of lettuce. The frog made a great pet, the spider not so much. I ended up giving the spider to my local community college. As far as I know, they had it in an aquarium in the biology lab.

Also, I work in a warehouse in Alaska. They find all sorts of things in the boxes. Our vans all travel on a barge across the ocean and there’s still living critters. Luckily, though, I’ve never personally seen a scorpion.